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#10 High Ranking Hunting Websites [& WHY]

A lot goes into creating a high ranking website. You can’t just write a ton of blog posts and articles without a direction and expect to get a lot of traffic to your website.

There is a lot of preparation and calculation that goes into creating high performing blog posts. It’s a finely tuned science that has some core principles that you need to abide by in order to get quality traffic and leads to your website.

Some aspects of SEO have changed over the years and have continued to change and develop, but if you focus on the key aspects of SEO, you can do a lot for your websites traffic and performance.

In the hunting industry, there are some massive companies that do hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a month in sales every month. Many of those are the same companies that bring millions of visitors every month to their websites too.

Today we take a look at #10 top performing hunting websites online.

We are going to take it a step further by delving into what methods and techniques that these companies use to position and rank themselves more favourably on search engines. We are going to take a look at some specific aspects of their site like

Keywords that they are using to rank higher in search engines

Key phrases that companies are using to get better placement

Content that they are posting on their sites and how they are leveraging that content to drive users to their website.

Their menus and titles that they are using on their sites

1) LLBean.com

L.L. Bean is a high ranking site for outdoor and hunting clothing.

They get an average of 7.5 million visitors per month (wow), which as a huge number of people that come to L.L. Bean for outdoor gear and clothing. Though L.L. bean is not specifically a hunting website, their products accommodate a wide variety of outdoor enthusiasts.

There are a few reasons that the L.L. Bean website does so well with their search engine ranking, which include

Their use of keywords and phrases that are specific to the outdoor lifestyle

They are an e-commerce site that sells thousands of different outdoor lifestyle products

Their site is incredibly dense with content, and pages and pages of outdoor lifestyle targeted information and products.

The keywords that L.L. Bean uses in all of their product descriptions are outdoor specific and include words like train, hunting, down, outdoor, etc.

These are all words that if used in the right way and in the right density will significantly bump their PageRank, and since they have hundreds of pages with thousands of products, they have plenty of opportunities to use keywords and phrases to increase their search placement.

It also helps that they have plenty of positive review for their products, which is also a nice bump for their search engine placement.

Where product-based e-commerce sites can make mistakes is not giving enough depth to their product descriptions and having no product reviews. L.L. Bean has thought-out descriptions for every product and reviews for them as well.

2) BassPro.com

Bass Pro Shops are some of the largest retailers of hunting and outdoor gear in the entire USA. Unlike L.L. Bean which is covering the umbrella of general outdoor gear and wear, bass pro is specifically serving customers who love to hunt and fish.

With a booming website for e-commerce and more than 90 stores between Canada and the US, Bass Pro Shops has become one of the most successful outdoor, hunting, and fishing brands in the history of our country.

So what are they doing on their website that makes them rank so well on search engines?

You can take one look at their website and see that everything is clean and organized. With the thousands of products that they have on their website for sale, you can find a huge concentration of keywords and key phrases that target hunting, fishing, and the outdoor lifestyle.

You can especially find those in their menus and titles, which will give them an additional bump in SEO. A few examples of keywords and phrases they are using in their menus include

Hunting sale

Fishing sale

Shooting sale

Archery sale

Camping sale

Rangefinders

Scopes

Hunting Accessories

And even more niche words and phrases like ‘scent eliminators.’ Think about how many times per day, someone searches the phrases ‘hunting sale’ or ‘shooting sale’ online?

That’s one of the keys to Bass Pro picking up a ton of traffic online.

Just as you would expect, they also have a ton of product listings on their site, most all of which are in depth and target hunting specific keywords and phrases.

Those products also have customer reviews and ratings, which also boost their ranking on search engines. As one of the biggest hunting goods retailers in the country, they are doing right by maintaining their image and authority online.

3) Field and Stream

Field and stream is another one of the largest outdoor brands and retailers in the US. Specializing in hunting, shooting, fishing, gear, and clothing for any and all outdoor occasions, you can imagine that they would have a fairly detailed e-commerce site for merchandising all of their equipment and gear.

Just like Bass Pro, they do. As soon as you arrive at their site, you see a beautifully organized homepage with a concise menu at the top.

If you click on “Shop Departments” the first tab that you see come down from the dropdown menu is “Hunting.”

That is of course followed by categories for shooting, fishing, and clothing.

So you can immediately see that they are targeting for all of the most important keywords that they need to to attract traffic and customers.

From their, hunting is divided into subcategories that include everything from hunting clothing and boots to archery, game calls, tools, and other hunting accessories.

The one thing that Field and Stream do really well on their site is organization. Their menus allow you to search in a number of categories to get as specific or broad in the hunting category that you want.

Another thing that they nail, which is probably one of the biggest reasons that they do so well on search engines is that their product descriptions are as fleshed out and detailed as you can get.

If you click on the “product description” tab of any product, you will see a comprehensive overview of that piece of hunting gear, plus an easy-to-read bulleted list of features that they product provides.

4) Cabela’s

Cabela’s is another massive household brand name that is one of the best in the business when it comes to hunting supplies and gear. So what is Cabela’s doing so well that is landing them as one of the highest ranking hunting websites on the internet?

When you first come to Cabela’s site you will notice a beautifully designed homepage with their banner at the top in their classic forest green backdrop with yellow font.

One aspect of their website that is super beneficial is that they don’t have a complicated top menu.

You will notice that they only have a few menu options at the top of the page which includes a shopping tab, one for their bargain cave, and another menu option where you can learn more about the outdoor active or sport that you are interested in.

That last menu item links you to things like

Video tutorials on different kinds of gear

Articles on what’s the latest in hunting gear and news

Videos and articles that include how-tos for different outdoor and hunting products

You can take a look at all of the niche keyword and keyphrase use that they have for hunting in this section on their website.

In being a massive e-commerce site and physical retailer, and also producing quality content in multiple formats that is relevant to the hunting and outdoor community, Cabela’s has made their website a powerhouse in SEO.

5) Orvis.com

Orvis is another massive outdoor clothing and supplies brand that happens to also specialize in and sell hunting gear and equipment, as well.

When you first pop onto their site you immediately notice that the opening banner is actually targeted for pets, specifically dogs.

When you take your first look at Orvis’s top menu, you can begin to ascertain who and what the website is specifically targeted.

Currently, moving right to left on their menu you can see that “Men” is the first dropdown tab that you come across, and then “Women” right after that followed by “Fly Fishing,” “Dogs,” and “Hunting” on the tab after that.

Online users scan a page starting in the top, left hand corner and combing to the right, so you can get an idea from this that hunting is not their highest priority, but they are still considered to be one of the top ranking hunting websites online.

Here area few reasons why Orvis ranks so favourably on search engines

Having an easy to navigate hunting section, via the drop-down menu on the homepage of their website

Detailed product descriptions of every product on their website

Customer reviews on their products so that you have real feedback on the products you are shopping for

All of the above reasons give Orvis more opportunities to hit their chosen keywords and phrases for hunting.

In their product descriptions, they also include an overall description and a bulleted list of features that are easy to come through, and give them plenty of opportunities to provide all of the details that search engines need to rank them and their pages favourably.

6) Outdoorlife.com

Outdoorlife.com is another one of the biggest and highest hunting websites that you can find online. This is a site and a company that specifically targets the hunting crowd and is, in fact, the sister company of Field and Stream.

First of all, it is such an intelligent move that a massive company like Field and Stream would create an arm of their company that is more niched toward their hunting customers.

This gives them the outlet and the platform to create a deeper and more intentional connection with their hunting customers and fans by giving them content that is specific to their one favourite, outdoor interest.

So what are some things that Outdoorlife.com is doing right with for search engine optimization?

What’s really beneficial for the ranking of their website is the layout of their homepage. As soon as you land on their site you notice the Outdoor Life logo in the top left corner of the page, with an expandable drop down menu right next to it. The top menu of the page from left to right reads

Hunting

Fishing

Gear

Guns

Survival

Videos

What separates the Outdoor Life website from the other websites that we have looked at today is that its primary focus is not e-commerce.

It is like a blog or a publication in the sense that it provides articles, videos, and media that are intended to serve and help their audience. As you scroll down their homepage you can see their highlighted articles for hunting, fishing, survival, etc.

The main reason that their website performs so well on SEO is that they create extremely helpful and shareable content for their hunting audience.

This gives them plenty of opportunities to leverage keywords and phrases that are specific to the hunting industry, and with their authority, they probably also have rich backlinking to get even more traffic.

7) Remington.com

In the hunting world, Remington is a household name in firearms suppliers. Unlike the other websites that we have looked at in this review so far, Remington focuses on one thing that they provide for hunters, and that’s guns.

The other sites that we have looked at today have either been massive e-commerce and physical retailers that encompass every aspect of hunting, fishing, and the general outdoor lifestyle, or content driven sites that use high-quality content, videos, articles, and other forms of media to help and connect with their community.

That already lets us know that Remington is a more niche site than some of these other massive retailers. So what are they doing that is beneficial for their search engine ranking?

As soon as you land on the Remington site, you know that without question that they are a guns retailer that intends to cover all types of shooting and hunting situations. They have an easily navigable top menu that includes tabs for

Rifles

Shotguns

Handguns

Ammunition

Other Products

Custom Shop

Remington Country

What’s nice about shopping for firearms on this site as that as soon as you click one of the menu items for the weapons, and a drop-down menu comes down so that you can view some of their most popular products in that category.

Then, when you click on the specific gun, product, or piece of ammunition that you want to look at, it will take you to the products page.

When you look at the product page, you can see detailed descriptions of any of the guns that you want to look at, all using verbiage specific to the hunting and shooting industry.

8) Sportsmanswarehouse.com

Sportsmans Warehouse is another great outdoor e-commerce site that specializes in serving the hunting and fishing industry.

They are really trying to be an all-inclusive one-stop shop for all things that are related to hunting, camping, and the outdoors.

Taking a look at the homepage, you can get a really good overview of all of the categories of outdoor life that Sportsmans Warehouse is serving.

Once again, taking a look at reading the menu tabs from left to right, it appears that the top priority of the site is for those in the hunting and shooting community.

If you roll your mouse over the tab labelled “Hunting and Shooting” a drop-down menu pops down with options to look at supplies including

Guns

Ammunition

Reloading equipment and supplies

Optics

Shooting equipment

Gun parts

Black powder

Trapping supplies

Turkey hunting

And even options to search trapping supplies, decoys, game calls, and scents for hunting. Having all of these options to search through their store is definitely adding a huge bump to their search engine ranking.

If you click on any of the weapon subcategories that are provided through their menu, you can see tons of products listed for pistols, rifles, shotguns, clothing, boots, and any other hunting-related equipment on their site. When clicking on an individual product, it is rich with information.

Each product has a full description with bulleted lists that give you a breakdown of the key features of that product.

You can also look at all of the customer reviews for each product which include a star rating and text so that you can get a good idea of what you are getting into before you buy something.

The rich detail that goes into the organization of this site and all of the information about each product make this ripe for the picking when it comes to ranking high on search engines.

9) WideOpenSpaces.com

Wide Open Spaces is another large outdoors site that is specifically geared toward the hunting community.

This site much like Outdoor Life is more geared toward producing valuable content to the hunting community through articles and videos, than it is focused on e-commerce and selling product. This site has content for everything from advice and articles on bow hunting, small game hunting, and big game hunting to recipes that you can use for the game that you have caught.

Wide Open Spaces is a hunting and outdoors website that is dedicated to providing quality content for their hunting and outdoor audience.

If you browse through just a few of their articles, you can see that their content is full of useful and helpful articles that are related to hunting, fishing, shooting, and the wilderness in general.

Having a simple site with quick page speeds and loadings, and targeting all of the right keywords and phrases for their hunting audience is no doubt the key to their success in terms of search engine ranking.

10) RealTree.com

This is yet another outdoor website that focuses on producing rich content for the hunting community. This is another site that is more focused on creating helpful content for the hunting community than it is on selling product or increasing their sales base.

Real Tree is focused on bringing targeted traffic to their website, for those people are are interested in hunting, though they do have a store section of their site that is mostly clothing and apparel.

This site has been able to rank well on search engines because of the helpful articles on the site that are geared to hunters who enjoy

Deer hunting

Bowhunting

Waterfowl hunting

Big game hunting

Predator hunting

Small game hunting

All of their helpful, keyword and phrase rich articles on hunting bump them to the top in search ranking.

The Verdict

Some of the key reasons that these websites in the hunting and outdoor niches are positioned so highly is mainly because of the useful content that they provide their industry.

Whether that be detailed and up to date information on hunting with DIY’s, tips, tricks, advice from the pros, or equipment tutorials or a massive online shopping platform, these sites provide the best in high-value content for their audiences.

They leverage great content with organization, keyword placement and density, and providing detailed descriptions of the products that they offer to drive traffic and leads to their site.